Schröder has little chance of victory, top pollsters say

Gerhard Schröder's waning chances of winning Germany's general election were thrown into further doubt yesterday by the country's main opinion pollsters, who claimed he had almost no hope of victory in the contest this autumn.

In a highly unusual move, the heads of the country's three main opinion poll organisations said rising unemployment and a catalogue of blunders by his coalition of Social Democrats and Greens meant that the Chancellor had lost his chance of beating his conservative rival, Edmund Stoiber.

"The election has already been decided," Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, head of Germany's influential Allensbach poll organisation, told Bild Zeitung newspaper. "There is a mood swing away from Mr Schröder in favour of Edmund Stoiber."

Her view was echoed by Peter Schoeppner, the head of the Emnid poll group. "I cannot see how Schröder can turn it around," he said. "The feeling among voters is simply that the Red-Green coalition is simply not up to it."

Manfred Guellner, the head of the Forsa poll organisation, said: "It is getting more difficult for the Social Democrats by the day."

Their comments followed publication of new poll results yesterday that suggested the Chancellor had lost his crucial lead in the personal popularity stakes to Mr Stoiber, the Bavarian conservative candidate. Mr Schröder had so far been able to claim that even if the conservative Christian Democrats were ahead of his Social Democrats on policy, he was still the more popular candidate.

However, the Emnid poll group ranked Mr Schröder two percentage points behind Mr Stoiber for the first time and claimed voters rated the Chancellor as only the seventh most popular politician in Germany.

The poll's findings represent a serious setback for Mr Schröder, who only last week admitted that his personal popularity was one of the few trump cards he had left.

Germany's unemployment rate of four million, which experts said yesterday was unlikely to fall when June's figures are released next week, is the chief reason for the Chancellor's flagging election chances. Voters have consistently viewed Mr Stoiber as the better economic manager.

However, the Schröder government's popularity has been further undermined through the belated sacking of Rudolf Scharping, the defence minister, 10 days ago over sleaze allegations, and the controversial dismissal of Ron Sommer, the head of the loss-making and partially government-owned Deutsche Telekom.

The Chancellor's woes were compounded at the weekend by the resignation of Cem Oedemir, a senior Greens party MP, over new claims of sleaze.

Mr Stoiber, however, also suffered a setback when he accidentally hit a woman in the face with a football at an election rally.